Author Michael Wolff: Trump 'like a pinball shooting off the side'

It also raises serious questions about the role of the White House counsel.

On Thursday Rebekah Mercer issued a statement distancing her family from Bannon.

The book was originally slated for release on Jan. 9. The book also quotes Bannon as describing Ivanka Trump, the president's daughter, as "dumb as a brick".

Critics, though, point to the Trump administration's new policies, including heavy restrictions on admissions from 11 countries including Iran, Iraq, and Syria, which together accounted for 40 percent of refugees in the recent years.

Attempts by President Donald Trump's lawyers to squash the publication of a controversial book about his administration have only fanned the flames. "He used Sloppy Steve Bannon, who cried when he got fired and begged for his job". He appears to be totally obsessed with the media, the battle of ideas between the two parties, all of it. So let me say very forthrightly: This book is not about Steve Bannon.

"You realise where this is going", Bannon says,"This is all about money laundering". "I spoke to people who spoke to the president on a daily, sometimes minute-by-minute basis", Wolff added, saying he had notes and recordings of the interviews.

As soon as excerpts from Wolff's book leaked out in the media, many of Bannon's friends and colleagues urged him to release a statement defending himself. Beneath the surface, Amazon is surely working hard to keep the trolls at bay.

The extract reveals that the entire campaign was an elaborate ploy to lay the foundation for a Trump television network.

She often described the mechanics behind it to friends: an absolutely clean pate - a contained island after scalp-reduction surgery - surrounded by a furry circle of hair around the sides and front, from which all ends are drawn up to meet in the center and then swept back and secured by a stiffening spray.

The 71-year-old Republican president, who is approaching the first anniversary of his inauguration, has responded with fury to the claims in Wolff's book. "The fact that he is there was a tremendous miscalculation on the part of the White House in the first place", he went on to say.

"This is a guy who made up a lot of stories to try to sell books", Sanders said in an interview on Fox News Channel.

Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a longtime punching bag for Bannon, reveled in the aide's break with the president. Does it matter if the book turns out just to be mostly true? Many Washington-area bookstores, including KramerBooks, reported selling out of copies as of Friday morning at 10 a.m. ET (1500 GMT).

Bannon's reaction to the controversy has been muted.

A recurring theme in Fire and Fury is the question of Trump's fitness for office.

"I think the president of the United States has shown he's very very capable; very, very talented", conservative commentator Ed Martin tells Weekend Edition.

"I have to learn how he takes information in, processes it and makes decisions", Tillerson told CNN.

Some Trump allies even encouraged him to welcome Bannon back into his good graces.

"Whether he realized it was an interview or not, I don't know".

Trump coolly noted Thursday that his full-throated counterassault appeared to have its desired effect on Bannon.

"He called me a great man last night", Trump said, referring to Bannon's radio show appearance.

Trump calls bombshell book writer a 'total loser'
Trump on Twitter on Thursday called the book "phony" and "full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don't exist". Fire and Fury gained traction after President Trump read released excerpts, one claiming Bannon called Donald Trump Jr .